It is important for people to have connectivity to communication services (e.g., telephony, data services, and the like). To facilitate communication between user equipment and various radio access networks (RANs), network entities such as eNodeBs, base stations, and the like typically operate to establish a link between a given wireless-communication device (WCD) (e.g., a handheld mobile radio, a vehicular subscriber modem) and a given network resource, typically using a standard protocol for over-the-air communication, an example of which is 3GPP's Long Term Evolution (LTE), which is one example protocol for a type of wireless communication known as orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) communication. In addition to mobile radios, some examples of commonly used WCDs include cell phones, smartphones, tablets, notebook computers, laptop computers, and the like. And certainly other examples could be listed.
In a typical arrangement, a WCD includes one or more radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) via which the WCD is able to engage in wireless communication via one or more wireless-communication bands associated with one or more wireless networks. Moreover, one bandwidth-increasing LTE technology is known as carrier aggregation, according to which a network entity assigns multiple component carriers to a given WCD at a given time, and a carrier-aggregation circuit in the WCD functions to combine data from the multiple component carriers into a single data stream for processing by the device. It also often occurs that a given WCD makes a determination, either programmatically or due to receiving a (local and/or remote) instruction to transition from communicating with a given wireless network via a given band to communicating with another wireless network via another band.
Accordingly, there is a need for the present apparatus and method for carrier aggregation and fast network switching with a single-baseband-modem, carrier-aggregation-capable WCD.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.